Should You Weigh Yourself Every Day?

March 8, 2010 By

Last week I wrote about, and you commented wonderfully on Fat Acceptance. I thought it would be interesting to see what your thoughts are on another frequently discussed topic, and a question I am frequently asked.  That question is:

 ”Should you weigh everyday?

I, of course, don’t have the correct answer for this question because like so many other aspects of this weight loss journey I don’t think there is just one way to handle weighing regularly. However, I can tell you how I approached the scale at three different points on my journey.

When I was gaining weight with no end in sight I rarely weighed. If you will remember, I slowly put on the pounds during the first three years of my marriage, but the big jump came during my first pregnancy and the resulting 75 pound weight gain. After I gave birth to my first daughter I rarely weighed. I occasionally stood on the scale but got so depressed to see the numbers going up, up, and up that I just quit weighing. When I joined weight watchers or some other program I of course got weighed, but I never stayed on those programs very long.

During my final journey to lose weight I committed to myself to weigh everyday. I know – a lot of people disagree and that’s perfectly fine, but that’s what I did. I weighed everyday to check in on my progress. One thing I learned very quickly however, was that the scale won’t move down every day, or even every week. In fact, I became very attuned to the rhythms of my body when it came to losing weight. Certain times of the month were harder than others, and I understood that weight fluctuates. What I also learned was that what I was looking for was an overall downward trend, not just a straight line of loss. Weighing daily kept my accountable.

After I reached the point where I was happy with my weight I had to decide whether or not to continue with the daily weigh-ins. I decided to continue weighing daily and I’m glad I did. All these years later I still stand on the scale every morning. For me, it keeps me honest with myself. I give myself a 3 – 5 pound range to fluctuate within, and when I hit the “high” number, I immediately take action. I ramp up the exercise and watch the extra snacking that I may have allowed into my life.

There are studies that show that the benefits of weighing daily can be measured quantitatively. A study from the University of Minnesota found that adults who weighed themselves daily while trying to lose weight, lost 12 pounds in 2 years, whereas people who weighed themselves weekly lost six pounds.  The daily weighers also had less of a tendency to regain their weight.  I have found this to be true in teaching my weight loss classes over the years.  The people who weighed daily lost more weight on average during the class period then those who chose not to.  It is a personal choice, but if you are struggling with lack of progress, then considering weighing more frequently may help your long term success. (As long as you can accept those normal fluctuations!)

Where are you on the scale issue? Do you weigh every day, every week, or have you thrown the thing out the window and rely on other measures to measure your progress and keep you accountable? Diane

Filed Under: obesity, Weight Loss Tagged With: , ,

Why Do We Run to Food?

March 5, 2010 By

Food was a struggle for me. Why then, was food my first choice in times of stress, boredom, anger, unhappiness, happiness or nervousness? At the end of a long day I’d hold an opened carton of Breyer’s ice cream in one hand and a spoon in the other, shoveling the ice cream in right from the carton. One time, John caught me standing in our dining room, reaching my hand into the recesses of the buffet drawer, pulling out my secret stash of Dove chocolate. He said, “I was looking for you.” I said, “Want a chocolate?”

Why did I want a chocolate, or ice cream, or chips in the first place if my weight was such a source of anguish for me? You would think that I would have shunned fattening food rather than welcoming it like an old friend. Logically that makes sense doesn’t it? If something in your life causes you pain, don’t you normally take steps to avoid the pain? For example, if your old car continually breaks down, don’t you begin the process of replacing the old clunker with something more reliable? If your best friend betrays you time after time do you still beg her to be your friend? I wouldn’t think so.  Yet we who struggle with the love and addiction of food do that very thing. We turn to food as a soother for any emotion we feel, thus adding to our weight problem.

I have yet to speak with someone who struggles with their weight who doesn’t experience this phenomena. Time after time I talk to people who express their frustration over their inability to stop using food to sooth emotions. I hear the frustration in their voices because I too felt that frustration. Learning to break the cycle of running to food wasn’t easy, but it was a key component to my success.

During the year that I lost 158 pounds, I learned a lot about myself. I learned that I didn’t just love food, I craved food. I realized I treated food in a way that was similar to the way alcoholics treat alcohol. The difference with food is however, is that we need food. As hard as breaking an alcohol addiction is, at least you don’t need alcohol to survive. Food is essential, vital,  and necessary for life.  There were three things I did to help me break my bad food habits.

Preparation – I knew food was a problem for me, so when I started following my Fit to the Finish plan, I prepared for the inevitable times of running to food. I got rid of all the “happy, fattening” food in the house. Gone were the chips, high fat crackers, secret chocolate stashes and full fat ice cream. In their place came crunchy veggies, baked chips, frozen yogurt, hard candy, gum (lots of gum), and hot drinks. I liken it to a breakup of a relationship. Before I was married, and would part ways with a boyfriend, I rid my life of any reminder of him. Even if I still cared emotionally for that person, I knew that part of my life was over and got rid of any reminders. That’s what I did with food too, I broke up with food. I still loved food, but I knew that certain types of food weren’t good for me, so I replaced the bad food with good. That took preparation.

Practice- It didn’t always work to be prepared. There was still the issue of overeating good food. After all, even a whole bag of baked chips has a lot of calories, and will definitely cause a weight gain if the whole bag is eaten on a daily basis. So I practiced making right choices by consciously choosing better, healthier foods. Portions were measured and memorized, and when I made a mistake I tried to figure out what had gone wrong, and moved on to the next opportunity to make a better choice. Over time the mistakes became less frequent, and the results became more visible.

Persistence- Sometimes its easy to get complacent once you have seen some success on the scale. It took about 50 pounds for me to really be able to tell that my body was starting to change. In the past, it would have been at this point (or sooner) that I would have said, “Oh, I’ve got this eating plan down. I can relax now.” NO. Don’t relax, don’t let down your guard, instead persist and persevere and point your mind towards your final goal, not the intermediate ones. By doing this I was able to keep the weight loss going through the ups and downs of life’s challenges, and ultimately reach my goal weight.

Do you feel frustrated sometimes when you run to the very thing that caused your weight issues? How do you handle this?  Diane

Filed Under: Choices, self esteem, Weight Loss Tagged With: , ,

Afternoons Can Be Dangerous

March 4, 2010 By

I wanted to thank everyone for their insightful comments on yesterday’s post on Fat Acceptance. It’s a touchy subject and I think everyone had some great thoughts. Reading your comments made me appreciate yet again the power and depth of the blogging community.

What is it about the afternoon that is so difficult? Every morning of the ten years I struggled with my weight I’d swear that I was going to have a good eating day. And sometimes I’d do okay in the morning, but once about 2:30 p.m. rolled around, the afternoon munchie monster began rearing its ugly head.

monster

I’m still amazed at how much I was able to eat in one afternoon. I tried to resist, but oftentimes ended up eating one unhealthy food after another. For example, I may have eaten half a bag of chips, a handful or two of cookies, some leftover biscuits smothered with butter, a spoonful or twelve of ice cream, and anything else I could get my hands on. The couple of hours before dinner time were so hard for me to control my eating.

Even when I was officially “dieting” and had purged the house of most unhealthy foods, I would find all sorts of things to eat. I’d make muffins or cookies. I’d eat the kids animal crackers by the bagful, and search the recesses of the pantry in search for something “good” to eat. The afternoon munchie monster was in full swing. After I had eaten all I could, I’d be so annoyed at myself. Why did I just eat all that when I was so determined to be good that day?

I think there were several factors that contributed to me giving into the afternoon munchie monster:

I didn’t plan ahead.

I had too many tempting foods around.

I thought I had to deprive myself of most sweets to be successful.

I was easily pulled into an emotional eating vortex.

Way back in 1997, when I finally lost my 158 pounds, I worked really hard to conquer the afternoon problem. I used the kitchen timer like I talked about on Dr. Oz. I set it for 15 minutes when I felt the urge to overeat, and nine times out of ten when the timer rang I determined that I wasn’t really hungry, but rather experiencing another type of emotional hunger. In addition to the kitchen timer, I also made sure I had some healthy snacks that I liked around. This made a big difference. And finally, I did not beat myself up if I made a mistake.

Is the afternoon a potentially difficult time for you? If so, what strategies do you employ to tame the monster?  Diane

Filed Under: cooking, excuses, Weight Loss Tagged With: , ,

Situational Snacking

February 3, 2010 By

Do you have a snack monster following you around? And no, I’m not talking about your teenage children! Are you one of the many, many people who lives for snacks and loves snacks of all kinds? I know I was. And when I’m talking about snacking I’m not just talking about those 10:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. snack times, but any time when you are eating between your main mealtimes.

One thing I’ve realized over the years is that a lot of snacking is related to certain situations. Think about the following scenarios:

• Do you always have crackers or chips when you sit down to watch TV?

• Do you tend to pick up a candy bar or goodie every time you stop for gas?

• Are you a taste tester when you (or your spouse) is cooking?

• If you drink alcohol, are you accustomed to drinking a glass of wine before certain meals?

• Does a football game just not seem complete without cheese nachos, chocolate candy, and salsa?

• Does the vending machine at work call your name at a certain time every single day?

If any of these scenarios sound familiar to you – relax – you are not alone! I had many situations during my obese years that I felt required a little “snack or two or three.” And if I had stopped to add up how many additional calories I was consuming by downing those little bites of things here and there I probably would have been surprised. I was easily adding more than 500 calories a day to my food intake – easily. No wonder I just kept gaining and gaining. Between the snacks and the cokes I was a mess.

I realized as I was on my weight loss journey that much of my situational snacking was a habit. And as such I needed to break myself of snacking unnecessarily. Unnecessary snacking is different from planned snacks! Unnecessary snacking almost always involves a situation that you have associated with a certain food. It’s similar to the thought that you ”have” to eat certain foods at certain holidays. Sometimes those stereotypes are meant to be broken – as was the case for me. I needed to break myself of those situations where food was involved unnecessarily – like eating plates of chips and cheese after dinner for no good reason. For me, I had to substitute other things for food – like scrapbooking or knitting or just talking on the phone. I also had to plan for those times as I knew I had the tendency to fall easily back into old habits.

Have you identified situational snacking on your journey? What was your solution to reigning in the unnecessary snack times?  Diane

Filed Under: Choices, Weight Loss Tagged With: , ,

Are You Prepared For The Long Trip?

February 2, 2010 By

gearshiftWhen I first started gaining weight on my honeymoon I was frustrated. The first three years of our marriage saw the scale move up about 45 pounds. Fortunately for me I’m just shy of 5’10″ so I can “carry” a little more weight than someone who is 5’3″. Nonetheless, the weight wasn’t flattering nor healthy. And then when I went from merely overweight to morbidly obese after my first pregnancy, well, I was frustrated.

I was also in a hurry. I was in a hurry to lose the extra weight I had so willingly piled on and get “on with my life.” And being in a hurry, I tried numerous diet plans with very little success. Every diet plan promised results, and most of them were fine and decent plans. But no diet plan promised the quick results I wanted. And thus, I didn’t stick with any of those plans long enough to lose more than 20 pounds. And when you need to lose 150 pounds, 20 pounds isn’t much. Especially considering that I promptly gained that 20 pounds back and usually added a few to go with it.

My problem? Well – there were many. But one problem I had was that I was in a hurry and wanted immediate and steady results. As we all know, weight loss doesn’t cooperate by falling down in a steady, slow line. Rather it zigs and zags, hops around, and sometimes stagnates like an ugly green pond full of algae.

And who wants to sit in the same ugly place? I certainly didn’t.  So I would quit when things got hard, or I got bored, or my weight loss stalled.

It’s funny because although I couldn’t tolerate a slow diet plan, I tolerated being morbidly obese for years and years and years. That makes no sense to me at all.

So when I finally started losing weight by following my Fit to the Finish plan, I set out with a different mindset from the very beginning. I gave myself a little pep talk and reminded myself that I hadn’t gained all this weight in two months and I certainly wasn’t going to lose it in two months. So I tried to prepare myself for the long-term road that I knew was ahead of me.

Going into the process with that realization made me much more prepared for the inevitable periods of boredom and frustration that came during my 14 months of weight loss. And bored and frustrated I did get.

Quite frankly, it gets boring watching every bite that goes into our mouths, or at least it did for me. It was frustrating to feel like I was doing all the right things and either no one was noticing or the scale wasn’t moving.  But I was prepared for a long trip so I just buckled my seat belt and kept driving forward.

Because I knew that going backwards wasn’t an option. Because if I put myself in reverse then I would end up gaining the weight I had fought to lose and I knew I didn’t want to do that.

So as you face your journey head on and feel the urge to get frustrated and quit – remember that it’s a long trip. It’s okay to take a detour to “maintain” where you are for a while, but it is important to try and keep things either in neutral or drive. Because if you go into reverse you will most likely get frustrated with yourself and be tempted to permanently detour as I had done many, many times before.

What strategies do you use to prepare for the possibility of a long trip? How do you stay positive when things aren’t going the speed you want them to?  Diane

Filed Under: goal setting, obesity, Weight Loss Tagged With: , , ,

I Was Judging UnFairly

January 27, 2010 By

breadwithbutterHere’s the situation that happened at my house a few months ago. We had a group over for lunch, where different people were bringing different parts of the meal. I made a vegetarian chili, and one lady said she would bring bread. “Great,” I said. Well, I don’t think I would have said that had I known what she was going to do to the bread.

She came in with two small loaves of french bread and a Wal-Mart bag. She asked if she could heat the bread up in my oven as she was going to do cheese bread and it needed to be freshly cooked. “Of course,” I said, and turned on the oven. Then, to my shock, she pulls out TWO sticks of butter and asks for a bowl in which to melt them. Puzzled, I handed her a bowl and watched as she melted the butter in the microwave.

THEN, she used a pastry brush and brushed the entire TWO sticks over butter over the opened bread loaves. THEN, she put an entire bag of shredded cheese on each loaf and put the whole greasy thing into the oven.

I didn’t even know what to say. The whole time she was making the bread she was going on and on about how much her family loved this bread and how they just got so excited every time she made it. I was standing there in shock. This was not a morbidly overweight woman, but like many people, could lose about 25 – 35 pounds.

I wanted to tell her to stop smearing all that fat all over the bread but I just couldn’t bring myself to be rude. I wanted to ask her if just a sprinkling of cheese would be sufficient but I didn’t.

What I did do was make sure I didn’t eat any of that “high-fat, horrible for you” bread.

But then later,  as I realized that I was standing in “judgement” of her actions, I felt guilty. I did many, many similar bad food things throughout my years of struggling with my weight. I added loads of fat to foods that didn’t need anything added to them like bread, veggies, fruit, pasta, and more. I honestly wasn’t thinking about the health and/or calorie aspect of any foods I was making. I was just trying to make everything taste as good and yummy as I thought it should. And if bread was good alone, then bread with butter must be better. If fruit salad was tasty undoctored, then adding 1/2 cup of sugar to it would make it even tastier.

What a difference just having an awareness of the nutrition, calorie counts, and healthyness of foods our body needs makes. Perhaps the woman at my house really didn’t think about how many unnecessary calories and fats she was adding to her food. Like I used to be, perhaps she was just doing what she had seen done by other people.

In any event, I learned another lesson that day. I shouldn’t judge other people for their food choices, but should realize that they too can change as I did. Perhaps I should have asked her if we could leave one loaf “unadorned” for those of us who were watching our fat intake – or not. I also learned that it is very hard to know for sure how dishes are prepared. Had I not seen her make that bread I would have incorrectly assumed it just had a lot of cheese on it. I may have eaten a piece and scraped off the cheese. I like to think I would have been able to taste the excess butter though!

What do you think when you see people preparing food in a way that you never would? Do you say anything or just let it go? Any tips on guiding people in the right direction?  Diane

Filed Under: Choices, cooking, Weight Loss Tagged With: , , ,

Avoiding Deprivation

January 25, 2010 By

The dieting and weight loss worlds can be full of “NO’s“.

• Don’t eat this.

• Don’t do that.

• Not too much of that.

It’s really easy to find yourself in the deprivation mode. I know it happened to me, not only during my countless unsuccessful attempts at weight loss, but also during my successful time when I lost 150+ pounds. Some would argue that a little deprivation is a good thing, but I’m not sure I agree with that statement. What do you think?

For me, what happened when I attempted to completely deprive myself of a certain food or activity was this: I began to want that food more and more each day. And the more I thought about the food the more I wanted it, and the more I wanted it the more I thought about it. Until finally I cracked. I didn’t just eat 2 or 3 cookies, but instead I made six dozen chocolate chip cookies and ate at least half of them the minute they came out of the oven. Even as I was eating them I know I should stop but just couldn’t. And after I reached the point of feeling a bit ill the guilt would set in.

“Why had I done that,” I’d silently say to myself. “Why couldn’t I resist the lure of chocolate cookies?”

Everyone reacts differently to situations, but I realize that I had deprived myself of something to the point where I could no longer approach it rationally. Instead, it became all I wanted to eat. Even as I was chewing through a salad, or walking down my neighborhood street I thought of cookies (or whatever). I had to have it. So I did.

During my successful weight loss year I allowed myself to say no to chocolate for about the first month or so of my journey. I chose to do this because I honestly was addicted to chocolate. So a “cooling off” period was definitely in order. During that first month I didn’t feel deprived because I wasn’t eating chocolate, rather I felt myself becoming more in control over my feelings concerning that particular food. And after the first month or so I ate a little bit of chocolate here and there as I desired it.

For me, deprivation backfired every single time. I declared a moratorium on chips and crackers but that backfired in a big way. So I learned to incorporate things I wanted in the proper portions, thus allowing myself to feel as though I really could eat anything I wanted to without blowing my attempt at weight loss. And it worked.

And that’s still have I live my life. There are times where I say, “I’m not going to eat any sweets this week,” and I’ll follow through on that, but for the most part, I choose carefully what I eat, and eat what I love. Of course my tastes have changed over the years and I truly desire healthier foods now than I did even five or six years ago.

What are your thoughts on depriving yourself? Do you see any benefits to it? Perhaps in the area of self-control or increased willpower, or is there no room for deprivation in your diet?  Diane

Filed Under: Choices, Weight Loss Tagged With: , ,

Are Weekends Harder?

January 22, 2010 By

happy weekend

 

I always seemed to have the hardest time staying on track over the weekends. I’d do “okay” throughout the week days, but then the weekend would come and BAM, I fell right off the perilously balanced wagon I had been riding on. It happened every time I tried to lose weight.

It was extremely frustrating to feel my self-control slipping away and even more frustrating when I would realize on Sunday night how awful I had eaten over the weekend. I felt very guilty and felt like a failure. Why was it that I could make decent choices during the week but then fall apart every single weekend?

On the average “dieting” weekend I’d end up baking cookies, going out to eat several times, overeating at home, and snacking on foods I ordinarily would have turned down. These episodes didn’t do anything to help the scale move, but rather hindered my small forward progress. Eventually, faced with yet another Monday of starting over, I’d just give up all together.

Looking back, I realize that for me, weekends were harder for several reasons:

  • My daily schedule was much more fluid.
  • I didn’t plan my meals on the weekend (I don’t know who I thought would do it – but I didn’t!)
  • The weekends felt like a holiday and I celebrated thus.
  • I wanted to reward myself for all the deprivation I experienced Monday – Friday.

I realize that none of these reasons are very good ones for making poor choices, but they were the excuses I used during those 10 years of unsuccessful weight control. And looking back I think for me, the weekends were harder than the week. Some things that I did differently during my successful weight loss endeavor were:

  1. Planned every meal – even if it was going to be a restaurant meal
  2. As best I could – plannedfor unexpected snacking opportunities, ie: meeting friends, going to the movies, etc.
  3. Didn’t use the weekend as an excuse not to exercise
  4. Gave myself permission to “mess up” without feeling like I had ruined my entire life

Those four things, coupled with a lot of saying, “I don’t need or want that,” really helped me get through the weekends without completely sabotaging myself. And the great thing was that every weekend that passed successfully was one I actually enjoyed more. I so enjoyed spending time with friends and family without worrying so much about what I was going to eat. I loved being able to have that special dessert because I had planned for it. And because I had planned for it I didn’t feel as though I needed to eat the entire thing. Those strategies were actually very freeing.

So where are you right now? Weekends harder than weekdays? If so, what do you do to combat that tendency, or what winning ideas do you have to help us all in this journey?  Diane

Filed Under: Choices, excuses, Weight Loss Tagged With: , ,

If You Give Diane A Cookie. . .

December 21, 2009 By

There’s this children’s book series, the first of which is If You Give A Mouse A Cookie. The book details what happens between a little boy and a mouse when the mouse appears in his life asking for a cookie. They quickly dissolve into bedlam, but have a lot of fun along the way. When I was reading that book the other day it made me think about my life. Here’s what happened to me when I started to eat too many cookies.

If you give me a cookie, then my size 10 pants won’t fit and I’ll need new ones in size 16.

 New Size 16 Pants

And once I outgrow those pants I’m going to have to start making some really sad looking jumpers.

 Family Picture

 I’ll live in those jumpers for a while, but in the meantime my self esteem sinks lower and lower.

  Squatting

 Until one day, while standing on my doctor’s scale, I realize I’ve got to clean up my life and get healthy and quit putting bows on my head.

Christmas Bow

So I start walking, and little by little I feel stronger, more confident and healthier.

Diane walking

 Until the day arrived and I said, “I’m done.” And I’ve been done for 12 years now. Not with eating cookies of course, but with losing weight.

 All Done!!

And then just like the story of the little mouse who wanted a cookie, I might still have a cookie every now and then, but I never have so many that I have to repeat the book’s lessons over and over again.

Just think – once you get stronger, healthier, and more fit – you will never have to let cookies or choices pull you down. You can have your cookies (occasionally) and love life at the same time! What’s your story?  Diane

Filed Under: Appearance Tagged With: , , ,

Self Imposed Limits

December 8, 2009 By

I don’t like limits. Limits aren’t fun. Limits box me in and often times I hurt myself trying to get out. During my obese days, I didn’t have any limits on the food choices I made. If I wanted an entire 16 ounce bag of peanut M&M’s, then that’s what I had. If I wanted five individual chip bags at 2:30 in the afternoon, I ate them, and if I wanted to sit on the couch all day feeling sorry for myself, then that’s exactly what I did.

Of course I had societal limits – I didn’t eat that bag of M&M’s in front of my friends, nor did I model the five chip bag trick to my children. In front of other people I limited my food choices to those that were healthier and more moderate in amount. Once I began on my final journey to lose weight I had to decide what limits I wanted to set up for myself with regards to food. I had done some of the more popular diet programs, read a lot of weight loss books and magazines, and honestly, had all the book knowledge I needed to lose weight. But because I had never been successful in self-limiting my food choices, I was concerned.

Should I even set limits? Or should I just eat when hungry and stop when full? Should I limit the amount of certain types of foods I was eating, and if so what? I eventually came to realize that because of my personality, I didn’t want to self-impose very many limitations on myself, but rather I wanted to learn to enjoy food in the right way. So instead of strictly imposing rules on myself, I had some guidelines which gave me enough of a box to get the job done, but also had some openings for breathing room. Here were the limits I set for myself during month number one:

Month One Limits

No chocolate (this was huge)

Keep fat percentage overall to 30% or less

Eat just one portion at a time

Exercise every day (just 15 minutes)

No eating after dinner unless it was planned (this was very hard at first)

You can see that my month one limits were a bit strict, especially with the chocolate and the nighttime eating. I picked those two habits to work on first because I knew I had a serious problem. Normally, I ate chocolate more than I ate veggies, and nighttime snacking had become like a second meal to me. Was I always perfect that first month? No way. But I had more good days than bad, and those good days gave me the confidence I needed to start believing in myself. As the month went on, I started feeling better about myself emotionally, even though I hadn’t lost much weight. I felt some control over my choices, and for the first time in a long time, felt positive about my future.

Rest of My Life

Once the first month passed, I tackled one bad habit after another. Whenever I read your blogs, and you talk about a habit you are working on, I always think, “Yep, I had that habit too!”  The rest of my weight loss year was spend finding my way through the minefield of emotional habits I had developed with regards to food and replacing them with good habits. I still limited my food’s fat percentage, but loosened up on the nighttime eating and chocolate ban. I increased my exercise time to 30 minutes, and continued with the portion control. And you know what? Those self-imposed limits I placed on myself 12 years ago are still in place. Why did they stay in place?

Because they weren’t the kind of limits that made me feel constrained, but rather limits that gave me the freedom to make healthy, wise choices. What limits have you placed on yourself that may be hard to continue for the rest of your life? Or are there some limits you need to set to help you succeed?   Diane

Filed Under: Choices, self esteem, Weight Loss Tagged With: , ,
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